


The Perceptive Girl and the Quiet Boy

by sheberry (orphan_account)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: But he is still Hannibal, Gen, He'll manage, Inspired by Hannibal Rising, Pre-Canon, That time Robertus Lecter brought home a silent boy, Vulnerable Hannibal, mute Hannibal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-05-28 09:23:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15045902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/sheberry
Summary: She pressed closer to the marble of the statue as she watched the Count enter, followed closely by a boy. He was not what Chiyoh had imagined. She knew he had to be about sixteen years old, but he looked younger. Light-brown hair, brown eyes from what she could discern, high cheekbones, very pronounced. His posture was slightly hunched, his steps measured and careful, very slow. Above all else, he was thin. Too thin. Veritably emaciated. She knew the conditions in his home country were less than ideal, but was it really that bad?There was no girl in sight.





	The Perceptive Girl and the Quiet Boy

**i.**

_Paris, 1981._

She had always been good at hiding herself from unwelcome eyes. She liked to imagine herself as a fawn, there and gone again, barely leaving footprints. A fawn with a hawk’s heart, watchful, but unafraid. It had been useful to her before, and it aided her in getting onto the campus now. Ivy-covered walls and the silent stares of the stony statue of one Catholic saint or the other were all she was surrounded by. At this hour, the boarding school was always quite silent. Maybe they were the only ones who could see her, but she wasn’t worried about them. They never told on her.

Third floor, sixth window on the right. It was risky climbing up there; riskier, certainly, than running across the campus at dusk. She could see light in some rooms, though not in those among the row of windows she intended on climbing by. Except for the sixth window on the right, which was softly illuminated. If her lady could see her now, she would certainly be horrified. And perhaps a bit proud.

She was glad when she saw Julien was not there. He would have disturbed their quiet talk, as he always did. With newfound conviction, she knocked on the window, demanding entrance. Hannibal turned around from the desk he was sitting at and smiled at her before granting her wish.

“Chiyoh.” He was long past the point of being surprised by her visits. She stopped by almost every two weeks. Hannibal was notoriously bad at coming home on the weekends, when all the other boys were glad to return to their families; instead, he ended up somewhere on the other end of Europe and sent her a postcard. He had grown restless after the world had opened up to him again. “ _Konban_ -… um…”

“Your Japanese is already growing rusty. How? Aren’t you supposed to be all-knowing?”

“It is a difficult language.”

“It has its traps. But it hasn’t been that long.”

“Six months, now. Half a year.”

“Four months since you learned a single word of Japanese. And you should know a polite greeting is entirely inappropriate in my case. You know me. We are family. ‘ _Y_ _ā_ ’ will do.”

“ _Y_ _ā_ , then, and stay for as long as you like.”

“I’ll stay for as long as that strawberry blonde menace of yours is gone. Where is he? And can anything bad happen to him on the way back here?”

“I fear my strawberry blonde menace will be back in less than ten minutes. He has gone out for coffee.”

“Hopefully more than an espresso, then. I missed you.”

“So much you decided to climb up to my room? And to neglect your duties? Lady Murasaki will be displeased.”

Chiyoh’s lips thinned as she tried not to smile. “As displeased as she was when the Count-?”

He raised a warning finger. “Chiyoh, we swore to never speak of it again!” But Hannibal was smiling openly now, and his words held no ire. Somehow, though she knew never to trust him entirely, that smile had grown to mean ‘home’ to her, and she could never help returning it.

“Mylady is still proud of my achievement. Proud enough to allow me to scarper every once in a while.”

“She does? She never talks to me about it. Neither of them do. I cannot say I wish they would, but I find it strange that she mentions it to you.”

“They want to protect you. You’re important to them.”

“A son. I find it hard to relate to-” Hannibal broke off abruptly and sniffed the air. The sudden silence reminded Chiyoh of months gone by, and suddenly Hannibal seemed again like the frightened boy Count Robertus had picked up near Vilnius half a year ago. Then, Chiyoh became aware of footsteps in the hallway and understood his sudden caution.

“ _Bonsoir_ , Chiyoh!”

Julien came into the room and slammed the heavy wooden door shut behind him. The smell of an expensive coffee house with all its cigar smoke and freshly-ground coffee beans accompanied him like a perfume. The familiar atmosphere Hannibal and Chiyoh had established dissipated in an instant. It was exactly the reason Chiyoh could not stand that boy. He was well-meaning, but exhausting to an unbearable degree.

“ _Bonsoir_ , Julien. However, I was just about to leave.”

“A shame!” He hung his coat up by the door. “Father Nicolas would like to have a word with you.” When he saw her widened eyes, he started to laugh. “I’m just pulling your leg! Nobody saw you come in as far as I know.” Girls were not allowed on the grounds of the boarding school. During any time that was not extremely close to summer break, not even female relatives. The ecclesiastical administration wanted to prevent any inappropriate behaviour from happening in their school, but Chiyoh knew better. The only development their policies had led to had been an increase in ‘inappropriate situations’ involving the boys themselves. From the day Hannibal had told her about those goings-on onwards, she had never looked at Julien quite the same way again.

“Is anyone out there?” Chiyoh asked.

“No. Be quick, and you’re out before anyone notices you were here.” Julien, gentleman that he was, opened the door for her.

“Goodbye, Hannibal! Julien.”

She was out before any of them had a chance to respond. Julien blinked, slightly dumbfounded by her abruptness. Hannibal crossed his legs and smiled after her before returning to the book he had been taking notes from.

 

 

 

**ii.**

_Six months earlier._

Chiyoh’s curiosity had gotten the better of her.

She had been told to wait in her room until she was called into the foyer, but there she was, hiding behind one of the busts and peeking into the entrance hall of the Parisian mansion. It was the first time she had disobeyed one of her lady’s orders. She had expected to feel worse about it than she did.

Lady Murasaki was currently standing in the middle of the foyer, looking like a statue herself: pale and rigid. Worry and hope fought for domination on her face. Chiyoh had never seen her like that. She had been told, of course, what purpose the Count’s travel into his home country served.

Apparently, there had been a year-long struggle with the authorities, the embassies, the powers that be about who should have custody over “the children”. Chiyoh didn’t know too much about the history of her lady’s husband’s family. She did know that he was not truly a count. His family had lost that title decades ago, and yet he used it openly, and nobody corrected him, not even to tell him he would never have had a right to the title anyway, being the younger of the two brothers. It was his gesture of protest, she thought, against the country he had fled from in his youth. What she also knew was that his brother and his sister-in-law were dead. They had also tried to run, but had been shot at the border. That had been five years ago. From that day onward, nobody had known at all of their children’s whereabouts. Until now, apparently.

Several weeks ago, his request to be the custodian of his niece and nephew had been granted, and he had been allowed entry. Chiyoh didn’t know how many ambassadors must have accompanied him to make sure he was not arrested as a dissident as soon as he crossed the border. Chiyoh was pulled from her thoughts by the sound of the front door opening. Lady Murasaki tensed even more, bracing herself for bad news. She knew something Chiyoh did not, she realised suddenly. The occasion was not only a happy one.

She pressed closer to the marble of the statue as she watched the Count enter, followed closely by a boy. He was not what Chiyoh had imagined. She knew he had to be about sixteen years old, but he looked younger. Light-brown hair, brown eyes from what she could discern, high cheekbones, very pronounced. His posture was slightly hunched, his steps measured and careful, very slow. Above all else, he was thin. Too thin. Veritably emaciated. She knew the conditions in his home country were less than ideal, but was it really that bad?

There was no girl in sight.

The boy didn’t even look at her lady. Instead, he glanced directly at Chiyoh’s hiding spot. She wondered briefly what had given her away when she saw his nostrils flare slightly. Frightened by the intensity of his unblinking stare, she hid away entirely behind the statue and fled down the hallway as soon as she was sure they were all otherwise occupied.

She stayed in her room for two hours and heard nothing in that time, except for her lady’s sobs, muffled by three walls and yet audible. Chiyoh was young, but not stupid. She knew what had happened. The girl she had been supposed to be the perfect playmate for— _Mischa_ , she thought to herself—had to be dead. It explained the anxiety she had felt coming from her lady and the last bit of hope that had been destroyed by the confirmation that the Count had, indeed, only brought the boy.

Dinner came later than usual that day, understandably. Usually, Chiyoh was asked to help with laying the table, but that night she was not called until the food was ready to be served. She changed from her usual attire into something a little more elegant, knowing that she was to be introduced to the boy who would live in their house from now on.

The Count was there when she entered the dining room, standing behind the boy’s chair with one hand on the wood. The gesture looked both gentle and cautious, though Chiyoh could not figure out why he would be cautious. His eyes didn’t look reddened. He had not cried. Likely, he had had time to deal with the loss of the girl on his way back. “Chiyoh,” he began immediately after she had come in, “this is Hannibal, my nephew. My son now, at least on paper.”

Chiyoh was unsure what was expected of her, but she figured a polite greeting could never be wrong, so she dropped the tiniest of curtsies and extended a hand to the boy. He only looked at it as though it was a sight entirely foreign to him and made no move to shake it. Insecure, Chiyoh dropped the hand back to her side.

The Count sighed. “I think an explanation is in order. Hannibal is mute. I have been informed he has not spoken since his sister’s… disappearance.” Chiyoh, having been focused on the Count, thought she had seen a small jerk go through the boy’s body at those words, but she might have imagined it. When she looked back to him, he was entirely still again. “I ask you to be considerate of his situation. I am certain he will warm to us, in his own time.”

The boy’s eyes found her once more and now, from up close, she could see why they had frightened her the first time. Staring at her through those human eyes was no human boy at all, but an animal. Crouched down, shy, but still dangerous. She shuddered and quickly took her place at the table.

Hannibal never even touched his food, instead eyeing it with the same suspicion he had graced her hand with before. In the middle of being addressed, he rose to his feet and left the room. Lady Murasaki shared a worried glance with her husband. “He needs to eat.”

“At the orphanage, they have told me that he eats just enough to stay alive. He knows exactly where the limits of his body lie, and he never crosses them. I hope he will come back to himself and find his appetite again when he his among his family.”

“What have they done to him?”

“There are stories.” He didn’t say more than that, and Lady Murasaki did not ask.

For the rest of the evening, Chiyoh felt as if she was mute as well.

 

 

 

**iii.**

Chiyoh avoided Hannibal as much as she could without being impolite. It was not a difficult task per se. He usually sat obediently where anyone left him, staring into nothingness. His eyes never focused on anything unless he was directly addressed. Then, he looked at the person talking to him, but only for as long as they actually had words coming out of their mouth. Once they were finished, he would lose interest immediately. At first, Chiyoh had imagined his mind as a blank space, an empty hall. Now, though, she was certain he was simply living within the confines of his own body, his own brain. Nothing caught his interest, because he was busy enough with his own thoughts. His own memories, perhaps. He was traumatised, that much had become clear to her quickly enough. What she wondered about was why nobody got him help. She would never dare to ask either the Count or her lady that question, but it seemed strange to her. Again as if something, some important detail, was kept from her. Either because she was not important enough to know, or because she was too young.

In any case, as it was with every plan, there came a day when it went horribly wrong. For Chiyoh, that day came when she was told to study French literature. Her lady expected her to stay in the library for that task. Usually, Chiyoh loved the library. The smell of old books, the massive fireplace that warmed the house with its incandescent glow all winter, the crackling of the firewood. On that very day, she did not. Hannibal was sitting in the huge armchair the Count usually made use of. The boy was staring at the flames and didn’t take notice of Chiyoh when she entered, her Dumas dutifully tucked under her arm.

She forced herself to ignore him as he ignored her, but after she had read three pages, the silence with another person in the room and not speaking became too much to bear. “Should I read aloud?” Only after having said them, she realised they had been her first words to Hannibal. She didn’t exactly expect any form of reply, but his head appeared from behind the backrest of the armchair. He looked at her, a bit questioningly. He had been deep in thought again and had probably not even heard her enter. “Do you want me to read to you?” A nod, so faint she was, again, sure she had just imagined it.

“My pronunciation of French is still very poor. I will embarrass myself.” Now she was talking out of sheer nervousness, but she couldn’t get herself to stop. “I hope you don’t mind.” Hannibal shook his head. He seemed relaxed now. The danger Chiyoh felt emanating from him was gone entirely, and the room felt warmer again. His stare didn’t seem quite so unyielding, but maybe that was due to the glow of the fire reflecting in his eyes.

“Do you speak French?” It was a stupid question to ask someone who had been rendered mute, but Hannibal apparently wasn’t offended.

He nodded slightly, hesitatingly.

“Yes, that’s just about it for me as well.” She smiled at him, found that she didn’t have to force herself to do it, and began to read.

Toward the end of the third chapter, Hannibal got up to stoke the fire when it began to die down. One log fell from the pile, and sparks were flying. Hannibal jumped back to keep the sparks from getting into his eyes or on his clothes, and it looked comical enough that Chiyoh had to keep from laughing out loud. A tiny chuckle escaped from behind her fist nonetheless. Hannibal turned around, his expression suddenly pained, as if a memory had crept up on him unbidden. Chiyoh could imagine that a girl’s laugh would sadden him. She closed the book and put it aside when she saw he was rushing for the door, his hand already extended toward the doorknob. “Hannibal, wait, I didn’t-”

He was gone before she could finish her sentence.

 

 

 

**iv.**

Chiyoh awoke and knew instantly that someone was in her bedroom with her. Usually, her sleep was deep and dreamless, something she was grateful for. Not dreaming of her parents helped with keeping her homesickness at bay. If she was woken from her slumber so abruptly, there had to be something that had disturbed her.

She sat up and blinked into the dark blearily, suddenly not so sure anymore that she wasn’t still dreaming. The moonlight illuminated her room just enough to allow her to see the glint of a blade.

She froze where she sat, her heart picking up pace. Unable to come up with any other explanation, she addressed the darkness by the name she expected it to have—“Hannibal?”—and the darkness assumed the shape of a boy.

He crouched by one of the bookcases, a long kitchen knife dangling from between his fingers almost nonchalantly. His eyes gleamed amber.

Tearing her gaze from him for a moment, she could see that her door was ajar, the light from the hallway forming a thin line on the wall. She had half a mind to call out to her lady or the Count, hoping they would hear her, but what would Hannibal do if she screamed? Would she be fast enough to bolt to the door before he got to her? Likely not. She had seen him catch falling cutlery one-handed without even looking.

All she could think about was that her gut instinct had been right. He was dangerous, more animal than human. Everything about him was alien to her. His reflexes were lightning-quick, his senses honed and sharpened like the blade he was currently holding. He never spoke, never even sighed. She had never seen a single emotion on his face that was not complete indifference, just as a shark never smiled. _No_ , a voice she hadn’t called to her aid interjected, _he seemed sad to you yesterday._

Hannibal got to his feet, and she pressed her back against the headboard of her bed. She swallowed hard, her throat gone dry, when he made a few measured steps toward her.

“If you come any closer, I will scream,” she warned, not knowing whether it was a clever thing to do.

He stopped moving altogether and, after a second, hid the blade from her eyes behind his back.

“Can I… turn on the light?”

He didn’t respond, but neither did he hold her back from extending her arm and feeling for the cord of her bedside lamp without breaking his gaze.

All danger was chased away by the light. No unearthly eyes, gleaming like embers. No predator, crouched low, ready to pounce at any second. No approaching death. There was only that too thin boy once more, swaying slightly. When she looked down, she saw he was tapping his toes a bit, like a child would. His face was about as apprehensive as her own had to be.

“Would you mind explaining to me why you are in my room, with a knife, way past midnight?”

He didn’t explain a single thing, of course. Instead, he put the knife on her bedside table and left, as if it was the normal thing to do after such an experience. He closed the door behind him, quiet and considerate.

It took her two hours to find her way back to sleep.

 

 

 

**v.**

“He did what?” Robertus looked at the knife Chiyoh had put into his hand as if it had suddenly grown eyes and ears.

Chiyoh repeated her story to him. He wasn’t any less disbelieving the second time. “I have to talk to him. Immediately.”

“Don’t, please. I don’t want him to know I told you. It might… hurt him.”

“As it should. He can’t threaten you in our own house. That behaviour is unacceptable, and he should know that. And if he doesn’t, he should learn.”

“He never did anything to threaten me. When he realised I was scared, he was more careful. Almost gentle. And he left immediately. He left me the knife. If he had wanted to intimidate or even hurt me, he wouldn’t have left it here.”

Robertus sighed, rubbing his palm across his face like a man entirely too tired of his life. “I hadn’t thought it would be that difficult with him. I know so little about him, and they couldn’t tell me anything in Lithuania. All I know I know from two letters my brother sent me in all those years we were apart. Sometimes, there are days when I fear it might already be too late to help him. That he might remain this way forever, and in that case I have to go against Simonetta’s wishes and give him into institutional care.”

“Simonetta’s wishes?” Usually, Chiyoh wouldn’t have bothered him with questions, but he was in a talkative mood, and after the previous night, she was all too ready to take advantage of that if it meant she got answers.

“His mother was afraid they would one day take him from her. I never had any details, but he must have been a strange child. Not as bad as he is now, but strange nonetheless. She never sent him to a school, and instead acted as if he didn’t exist. She hid him away from the world. In the hopes he would never be found out about if she just kept quiet, I guess. But I don’t know any more. I had thought myself capable of handling him, but I can do nothing to help him. And if I consult a psychiatrist, they will take him from us either way. It might be better for us, but not necessarily better for him. My brother once wrote that he was unhappy being kept on their own property like that. You have never been to our house in Lithuania, but it can’t exactly be called small. If he felt caged in there, he would go mad in an institution where he would, for all intents and purposes, be a prisoner.”

Chiyoh gathered all her courage. “What about Mischa?”

“Mischa was only mentioned twice, once after her birth and once when she was three. My brother described her as a happy child, very intelligent, but the polar opposite of her brother. Hannibal was very protective of her. Possessive, even. That much I know.”

“Could it be that he was protecting me last night?”

“From what?”

She decided to be honest with him. “I read to him yesterday. He… I think he was happy about it. He listened to me. But then something humorous happened, and I laughed, and he got… I can’t say he got scared, but it startled him, and it changed his mood. Still, I think I got through to him somehow.” The revelation came to her by going over everything that had happened, completely sudden. “I must have reminded him of Mischa. He hadn’t been able to protect her, so now he’s trying to protect me, even though there is nothing to harm me here.” It was the only conclusion that made sense to her, and she looked at the Count, gauging his approval.

Robertus tapped his fingers against his chin. “At least one of us is making headway with him. I am very proud of you, Chiyoh.”

 

 

 

**vi.**

Hannibal’s life in Lithuania began to sound more and more like a fairytale to Chiyoh. When she closed her eyes, it played behind her eyelids. His parents died, and he and his sister hid away somewhere in the woods until the cruel world claimed the little girl as well. Alone, the boy wandered through ice and snow until he was found by some kind woodman who brought him to safety. But no matter how much he was coaxed to spill his story, his lips remained sealed. If only she could loosen them.

Hannibal beat her to it.

Once more he was the reason she sat up in her bed in the middle of the night. Screams rang through the house, unmistakably coming from Hannibal’s room. She heard the footsteps of the Count and her lady briskly walking down the hallway. At first, she wanted to press her hands over her ears and ignore the hell breaking loose around her, but she couldn’t. Even muffled, she would still be able to hear those screams, so she threw back her covers and padded barefoot to Hannibal’s room.

The Count was sitting on the bed, holding his nephew down. Hannibal was fighting against his uncle’s firm grip, thrashing on his mattress, all the while uttering entirely unintelligible sounds, as if he had lost his mind. Lady Murasaki was wringing her hands in worry, standing beside the bed, but unable to help in any way. When she saw Chiyoh come in, she pulled her towards her wordlessly. Wherever Hannibal was, all around him people forgot their voices, just as he had forgotten his own.

It took several minutes to calm Hannibal down, so that Robertus could let go of him. The Count wiped the tears from his nephew’s cheeks, gentle and patient as he had always been with him. And yet Chiyoh heard his words in her mind still, about how he would be forced to send Hannibal away if he didn’t get any better.

Lady Murasaki leaned forward and kissed Hannibal’s forehead. He closed his eyes at the gesture, waving them all away as if to tell them everything was alright now. The Count and her lady left, but Chiyoh remained in the room.

At first, Hannibal kept his eyes closed and didn’t react to her presence in any way. Then, he looked at her, blinked in confusion.

“You owe me this, Hannibal,” she explained. “If you can enter my room, I can enter yours. If you can watch over me, I can watch over you.”

He sat up at that, patting the bed next to him in invitation. When she sat down, she could finally take a closer look at how distraught he looked. He was breathing heavily, seemingly surprised at his outburst. His cheeks were blotched with red, tear-streaked, glistening in the moonlight. His hair stuck to his sweat-damp forehead.

“This will pass one day,” she said, because she didn’t know how else to comfort him.

His shoulders shook as he began to sob again. Quietly, now that he was awake and conscious enough to have a modicum of control over his body’s reactions.

Chiyoh touched his shoulder and gestured for him to lie down. She put his head into her lap where he could press his near-feverish cheek against the cool fabric of her nightgown. She began to card her fingers through the fine strands of his hair in what she hoped was a soothing gesture. “I also miss my home,” she confided, her voice breaking halfway through the sentence.

Weeping together didn’t feel all that terrible, she found.

 

 

 

**vii.**

“Do you blame yourself? For her death? Is that it?”

It was a bold question to ask, but they had spent an hour crying in his bed and the longest five minutes she had ever experienced in her room with nothing but the moonlight and a kitchen knife between them. That alone called for greater intimacy than they had shared before.

She could see Hannibal swallow. He nodded slowly.

“You shouldn’t. You were a child. There was nothing you could have done.”

He took the notebook she offered him, ripping it from her hands roughly and then looking at her fingers as if in apology. _I was not quick enough to save her, even though I could have been._

“It is the fault of those who have done it. Not yours. Never yours.”

_If I know I was capable of saving her life…_

“You were not capable of saving her life. She is dead.” Chiyoh was certain he would appreciate the truth more than platitudes and pleasantries and pitiful half-truths. “Let go of the idea that you could have done more than you did. You couldn’t. Otherwise, you would have done it. I know you well enough by now to say that nothing can stop you once you’ve set your mind on something. And she was the most important person to you.”

_She still is. She will always be._

“I understand.”

_If I want to avenge her, will you help me?_

The question came entirely out of the blue. For the first time, Chiyoh tried to imagine his voice saying those words to her, again and again and again, ever adjusting his tone and what she imagined his voice to sound like. In her mind, he still sounded like a boy, even though his voice must have broken already. He probably didn’t know that himself, having been mute for the past three years.

“Do you want to?” she asked, stupidly, because hadn’t she just said he couldn’t be swayed once an idea had formed in his mind?

_More than anything._

“It’s what Mischa deserves.” The name still had an air of the forbidden about it, and she uttered it like a prayer, quietly and with reverence. It was the only way to speak it without having Hannibal either flinch away or bare his teeth.

 _Not a word to my uncle and Lady Murasaki._ It felt like a threat, and the hair on her arms stood on end, goosebumps rising up everywhere on her body. It reminded her that her gut instinct had still warned her of him. It was hard to reconcile the vulnerable, wounded boy and the cool calculation she saw in his eyes sometimes. The danger. Like a hungry predator. But hungry for what? Was it more than revenge he wanted? There were secrets about him that made her both cautious and curious. She knew many stories, and in none of them had that combination ever lead to anything good. But there was more. The call of adventure, of a life far removed from the rules that had been put on her young shoulders.

“I won’t tell anyone. But why do you want my help?”

_I cannot go there anymore. I can never return to that place._

“I can’t do what you ask of me. I can’t take revenge.”

_Because you are not aware of the details of what they have done._

“Even then, I don’t think I could take anyone’s life.”

_Help me in any way you can._

“I… I will. I can try.”

_That is good enough. Thank you._

 

 

 

**viii.**

Chiyoh had realised quickly that usual taboos mattered fairly little to Hannibal. He had once walked in on her taking a bath and had thought nothing of it. He had apologised with only his eyes, but had made no move to leave. From then onward, it had become custom for them. They had grown to be like siblings in the two months they had known each other. So she had adapted and walked into her lady’s vast bath without hesitation when Hannibal was bathing.

“I had an idea. Do you want to hear about it?”

He nodded.

“You can’t speak your mother tongue. You can’t speak French or Italian. You can’t speak Russian. But you know all those languages perfectly well, don’t you? You’re fluent in all of them. You simply can’t find any words. Or any sounds at all, really, at least not when you’re awake. Is that right?”

Another nod.

“But what about a language you can’t actually speak? One you’ve never learned? You wouldn’t have any associations with the words, no memories, let alone bad memories.”

Hannibal’s eyes widened slightly. He seemed intrigued. In one smooth movement, he lifted his arms out of the water and crossed them on the bathtub edge, leaning forward to rest his head on them. Chiyoh was proud of having captured his attention so thoroughly.

“I want to teach you Japanese. It is the only other language I know, apart from French. I will get you books, and I will help you out with lessons if you want to. I can read to you, so you can get a feeling for the nature of my language. Do you think that might help? In any way?”

Hannibal seemed lost in thought for a long time. His eyes evaded hers. He appeared to focus on some crack in the tiles, tilting his head like a curious bird. When he looked at her again, it was sudden. He didn’t move a muscle, nothing aside from his eyes. But he looked pleased.

“You don’t have to talk at all, at first. Only listen to me.”

He did, looking a bit like an undine climbing up a fishing boat to listen to some sailor’s tales. Just human enough to not be chased away, and yet unnaturally still. Ethereal, somehow, surrounded by mist.

From then on, she juggled ancient Japanese manuscripts, smuggled them past her lady whenever possible, and Hannibal listened to her. Mostly in all his usual seriousness, but sometimes she managed to get a grin out of him when she told him some deeply philosophical joke or tried her luck at a tongue twister.

Sometimes, she saw him silently mouth the words she said, caressing their edges and syllables with his tongue as though he was trying to memorise them all. Rarely, one sound or the other visibly bubbled right up into his mouth, but he never spat out whatever he wanted to vocalise.

Other things became easier as well. Hannibal would still skip many of the meals they took together, but if Chiyoh brought him little morsels to somewhere that was not a kitchen or a dining room, he usually took them gladly. He allowed her to feed him, bite for bite, and when he chewed, it was with relish. _He must be famished_ , she thought. But he was finally gaining weight.

 

 

 

**ix.**

When it happened, they were in the bath again, which was pleasant for them and certainly quite unhealthy for the Japanese manuscripts. Neither of them seemed to care much about it. She had just read to him about the traditional Japanese way of presenting food, and he had taken a look at one of the illustrations and the caption. “ _Kaiseki_.”

His voice was coarse, akin to what Chiyoh imagined a raven must sound like. He had not made a single articulate sound, had not spoken a word for three long years. And she had been the one to break that spell.

He touched his fingers to his lips, taken aback by the sound of his own voice, just as she had predicted. He had gone into this sounding like a child, and now he sounded like a man.

“You’re not that boy anymore. You’ve evolved. You’ve stripped yourself of whatever had tormented him.” It was more complicated than that, she knew, but her heart beat too fast with excitement to make up some grand explanation.

“I have.” He had an accent, making the Japanese hard to understand, but she listened carefully. She knew in that moment she would listen carefully to every word he would ever say. They looked at each other for a few moments, a few heartbeats filled with silence, and then they fell into each other’s arms, relieved and confused and all too happy to forget what was past them. Chiyoh didn’t mind that Hannibal’s arms made her freshly-ironed shirt become wet and crinkly.

 

 

 

**x.**

“Hannibal, can I ask you something?”

“You can ask me anything, Chiyoh.”

“When you first arrived here, why did you never eat?”

“There was a taste I didn’t want to lose.”

“The taste of what?”

“Home.”

“And what does home taste like?”

“Sweet. Tender.”

“That sounds more like veal.”

His eyes were far away again, like they had been in those first weeks. “Yes, it does, does it not?”


End file.
